Freedom Promo

We love beardos and longhairs and bohos of every stripe and texture, but rarely do any of them go so far as to mail us exclusive tie-dyed 7"vinyl. White Flight just did, and we don't know whether to lick it or listen to it. A true promo conundrum. We'll put it on the Fisher-Price and let you know about the licking. The vinyl includes "The Condition" and "Timeshaker" from White Flight, as well as the Say My Name and 1,000,000 LIGHTYEARS remixes for each, respectively. We wish we could share them with you, but the best we can do for now is point you towards Caroline McCloskey's Gen F of White Flight from our most recent issue after the jump.

Do Not Disturb

White Flight is a natural resource

By Caroline McCloskey

People hate on hippies, but seriously? The genuine articles are pure-spirit children of the Earth whose open channel reception of the world is so uncorrupted and guileless that their vulnerability becomes not only beautiful but also a little frightening.

So let us all gather in a circle ’round brother Justin Roelofs. Together, we will link arms to form a human chain, and make it our mission to insulate this person from the quotidian toilet-swirl of W-2 forms, white socks, steering committees, "appeteasers," male realtors and any other beige time-sucking bullcorn that might clog his vision and prevent him from making radiant records like the one-off homebro created under the name White Flight.

"I started it right after I came back from this trip to South America, and I was just really clear," says Roelofs, speaking from the mountains of Northern California, where he's harvesting an herb. "For the six months before going to Peru I consciously decided not to write music. I decided I was going to take a break and see about it later, like damming it up and letting the water build and build and burst out." The result is some explosive sauce, a collection of layered sonic freakouts ranging from ecstatic goof-bursts to nu-wave lullabies. No matter what exotic compounds he's experimenting with, the mad scientist isn't afraid to drink his own potions, and he's definitely not wearing his helmet.

White Flight is almost entirely a one-man enterprise, written and recorded by Roelofs in neighbors’ basements and borrowed apartments. "I needed to seclude so I decided to go to the suburbs where I had grown up, to my next-door neighbor's house,” he says. “I moved into their basement and I'd record during the day while the mother and the father were at work, and then the son would get home from high school and we'd have another hour or two to play together. I was in bed by an early suburban hour, and I'd wake up early and start over." Back in Lawrence, Kansas, his longtime base of operations, Roelofs added vocals. "My friend's place had really high ceilings and I started thinking a lot about the frequency range, trying to feel other energy around my body and collaborating sonically with it to land into the microphone. I realized it's more than just my voice coming out of the body. Sometimes there are other things singing with me, it seems."

Though his work with White Flight may be complete, Roelofs has a greater vision yet—and he's not afraid to take it there. "I founded a foundation over the summer called the Human Crystal Celebration Foundation. I think if I work with other sound recording projects that the concentration will be on the foundation, and revelation, and any sort of realization that comes out of celebration with humans and crystals and sound vibrations." Okay, everyone: grip tighter.